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With the current interest in the media about the spread of ‘fake news’ and misinformation, it seems appropriate to reconsider the cases of two royal ladies who were both accused and found guilty of witchcraft during the early C15th. Were these simply cases of politically motivated ‘fake news’ stories? It is clear that in both cases that their enemies stood to gain by their fall and that witchcraft was an easy accusation to bring against any woman in an age of superstition and bigotry.

La Pucelle – Joan of Arc was brought down by accusations of heresy and witchcraft

They were also not the only women in the public eye to be brought down using similar methods – we have the very public example of Joan of Arc who was contemporary with Eleanor of Cobham and accused of heresy and witchcraft and burnt at the…

In this post, we reminded our readers that a lineal Lancastrian is a person descended from Blanche, the younger daughter of Henry of Grosmont, not from her husband, John of Gaunt, by another wife.

Titles usually fit into these categories:
i) To begin with, many older titles were created before Letters Patent in such a way that they could pass directly through the female line.
ii) Newer (late mediaeval onwards) titles were created under Letters Patent and theoretically could not but were in practice, as we shall see.
iii) Many Scottish titles, which are similar to category i. A good example is the late Michael Abney-Hastings (left, also known as “Britain’s Real Monarch”), who succeeded his mother and grandmother to the Earldom of Loudon after they both lost their only brothers during the World Wars.

In a significant number of category ii cases, the title in question was re-conferred on the previous holder’s son-in-law, in jure uxoris, before passing to the couple’s children. This is a frequently observed constitutional fiction, as these cases, some of them close to Richard III, testify:
1) Richard’s uncle and posthumous father-in-law the Kingmaker (right) was Earl of Warwick in jure uxoris. He was killed in 1471 and left two daughters, who died in 1477 and 1485 but his widow Anne Beauchamp, whose brother had previously been Duke of Warwick, remained as Countess until she died in 1492. Only then did her remaining grandson inherit the title.
2) Although the Dukedom of Norfolk is now (from 1483) limited to “the heirs male of the first Duke, lawfully begotten”, it passed through female hands several times before then. Margaret of Brotherton held it first, then her daughter’s son Thomas Mowbray. Anne, the last Mowbray was orphaned in 1476 and was Duchess until her 1481 death, as Edward IV sought to hijack the title for his middle son, Richard of Shrewsbury. John Howard was then “created” to this title through his mother. Under normal circumstances, it would have been in abeyance because his aunt’s male line, the Berkeleys, was still in existence. William Howard similarly married Mary Stafford in 1637, after her teenage brother’s death and was created Viscount Stafford, although
Mary retained the Barony for life.
3) Thomas of Woodstock was Earl of Essex, as was his daughter’s son, Henry Bourchier (d.1483) and Henry’s great-granddaughter Anne (d.1571). Similarly, Henry’s granddaughter Cecily married John Devereux and their great-grandson, Walter, was Earl of Essex from 1572. Their son, executed in 1601, is shown left.
4) In this case, we reintroduce Blanche. John of Gaunt was only “created” Duke in 1362 after Blanche’s father, elder sister Maud and infant niece had died. It is through Blanche, although we know it to be a fiction, that Henry IV claimed the throne.
5) Finally, we show (right) the sister of the present Duke of Norfolk and her famous late husband. Lady Carina Fitzalan-Howard has a brother and an elder sister. The 1483 remainder precludes her inheritance of the title.

In summary:
1) None of these titles passed to a child by the “wrong” wife of an in jure uxoris peer.
2) Some feminist writers, including some of the noblewomen who cannot inherit the titles, have said that such remainders are now an anachronism. However, to cancel them today would surely discriminate against past women, such that their fathers would not have inherited in the first place.

I would highly recommend this documentary by Janina Ramirez, whose book on the subject will soon be available

. She showed how Julian, who was female by the way, was born during the fourteenth century. She may well have had a husband and children but lost both to the Black Death before becoming an anchoress at St. Julian’s, Norwich.

Ramirez spoke about Julian’s magnum opus: Revelations of Divine Love, the first known book in English by a female author, quite revolutionary in tone and probably composed during the reign of Richard II and prominence of John of Gaunt. On the deaths of these two men, the religious atmosphere changed dramatically. Under the Lancastrians, Lollards were regularly burned and already being dead, as Wycliffe could testify, did not ensure safety. Julian would have been in great danger if her manuscript had been read more widely at this time.

She died early in Henry V’s reign of natural causes and was probably in her seventies at the time but the story does not end here. Her manuscript was taken to France to avoid the Reformation only for the French Revolution to strike. The nuns caring for the document saw some of their French sisters mount a tumbril and return in two pieces for their burial. The manuscript re-emerged during the last century, to be viewed as a feminist tract.

1) He created two peeresses in their own right – Margaret Pole as Countess of Salisbury and Anne Boleyn as Marquess of Pembroke (see point 2).
2) He gave noblewomen, such as the above, Lady Margaret (Stafford) Bulmer, Catherine Howard and Viscountess Rochford, an equal opportunity to be executed.
3) He gave women, such as Anne Askew, an equal opportunity to be tortured.
4) Having left only one male heir, not fated to survive him for long, all realistic claimants by 1553 were female thus England had a Queen Regnant.